ANOTHER LIFE:THE WHOOPER swans came back early from Iceland this year, hitching a ride on northwesterly winds, so that I missed the distant ripple of wings along the shore. Then came one of those golden October days for which I'd swap the whole of summer, and I thought we deserved an outing, Meg and I, to sit together by the lake and listen to the swans making music.
The hush of this hillside in an October calm has to be heard to be believed: it's as if the whole amphitheatre of little fields has its ear cocked to the ocean, to the soft susurrus of surf at the srutha, ("shruffa", as everybody says, for the place where the river ripples into the waves, in an extra dash of sibilance).
A sprinkle of linnets swept ahead of us down the boreen, an eerily reliable happening at this time, and there were pied wagtails, once again, at the stepping-stones stranded in mid-channel. Baby kites of flatfish flitted away from my boots and Meg's waterborne, paddling shadow.
Meg, you may need reminding, as she loops away madly over the strand, is a small black spa-brador as old in dog years as I am. But the sheer intoxication of space overtakes her every time: she unwinds like a spring. And beyond the sand was the dazzling lawn of the duach, with more rabbits spaced out like little dark gnomes than ever either of us could remember.
Robert Lloyd Praeger, the mega-naturalist, once wrote a book about his ramblings called A Populous Solitude: perfectly describing this confident concourse of rabbits, the last of which unleashed its flight at no more than 10 metres away.
When Meg returned at last from a pointless pursuit, her panting was as the roar of lions on Mount Gabriel (that is to say, a bit delirious and desperate).
There were 30-something swans on the lake, already a full autumn quota. There is a high land-cliff beyond it, a mossy, ferny wall, dark against the sun, that catches the whoopers' fluting calls and weaves them into a soft and random loop like a tentative theme for Albinoni. When our shapes first appeared, half the flotilla stretched their necks into startling, slender verticality. Then, as Meg settled at my side on the rock, they relaxed, some turning their necks to sleep, beaks thrust between their wings, the others keeping up their coded lullaby.
The whooper swan in a beautiful new Irish bird-book is rather too curvaceous for my taste: it's the upright poise as well as the yellow on the bill that marks its out at once from the mute swan. Birds of Ireland: Facts, Folklore and History, by Glynn Anderson (Collins Press, €27.95), is not intended as a field guide, but as a rich celebration of the interplay of birds with ancient human needs for magic and mystery, not to mention a well-shaped story or poem. Thus, the whoopers, Ireland's older, wilder swans, with feminine glamour and imperious comings and goings, are immediate grist to the author's industrious mill.
He retrieves much material that could easily have slipped into loss - there was so much more to be found in Irish and English than the well-rehearsed felicities of early monastic verse. On the other hand, there are limits to the meaning of "beliefs and traditions" when one is told, for example, that herons ("cranes", as many rural Irish still call them) "represented the logical mind, as well as patience while healing. They were birds of the moon, magic, shamanic travel, secrets and deep mysteries as well as symbols of contemplation, vigilance, divine wisdom and inner quietness." Is that it? In a manifest labour of love, Dubliner Glynn Anderson fits his antiquarian research into a matrix of modern knowledge about birds (though I shall continue to call his loons divers, if he doesn't mind, at least in Ireland) and the exalting bonus of this treasurable hardback is its superb use of lithographs by John Gould, England's 19th-century answer to America's Audubon, along with other bird-painters of that gifted age.
From the same publishing stable, Collins Press of Cork, comes a timely softback, Ireland's Garden Birds, by BirdWatch Ireland veterans Oran O'Sullivan and Jim Wilson, at €16.99. Most of the species are chosen for their rank in that organisation's garden-bird survey, but that left plenty of choice when it could include, say, the lovely grey wagtail, seen in 14 per cent of Irish gardens, with the long-eared owl, just peeking in at 1 per cent. There are 56 in all, with a good chance of seeing 30 of them in the garden "over a few years".
The authors help the chances considerably with advice on how to make gardens more attractive to birds, including the relative newcomers to nut-feeders and berry-bushes, such as goldfinches, siskins, blackcaps and redpolls. Michael O'Clery's gifts in design make this one for the windowsill.
EYE ON NATURE
We recently saw a tiny mouse eating the red berries on a pyracantha shrub. He only ate the seeds and spat out the tough skin.
Lucie Gaffney, Nutley Road, Dublin 4
Walking by the Dodder in Dublin I saw a bird smaller than a blackbird, but black with a white breast. It jumped from rock to debris and moved very like a wagtail.
Noel Mac Canna, Co Wicklow.
It was a dipper.
In Tipperary beside Lough Derg I saw a pigeon plunge down from 10 metres up a tree. When we found it five minutes later it had been cleanly decapitated and some feathers had been pulled off. What would do this?
Isabel Dwyer (8), Ballsbridge, Dublin.
Probably a peregrine falcon.
What is grubbing up the grass in front of mine and my neighbours' houses? When coming home from work recently after dark, I spotted a large, black and white racoon-like creature rushing behind the hedge.
Trish McMenamin, Dalkey, Co Dublin.
It was a badger.
A dolphin has been swimming about near the diving board at Salthill Prom.
John Smyth, Galway.
Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo; e-mail: viney@anu.ie. Include a postal address.
